Posted
by
Zonk
on Friday November 03, 2006 @03:27PM
from the mixed-messages dept.

Jeff writes "The New York Times is reporting that the feds have shut down the 'Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal' due to concerns from weapons experts that the 'papers give detailed information on how to build nuclear firing circuits and triggering explosives, as well as the radioactive cores of atom bombs.' One diplomat is quoted as saying, 'If you had this, it would short-circuit a lot of things.' Indexes to older (less sensitive) documents (and some html from pdfs) are still cached at Google today. Rep. Pete Hoekstra pushed for the public release of the archive to help determine 'whether Saddam Hussein destroyed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction or hid or transferred them'. Critics have said the archive was created to perpetuate misinformation about WMDs."

The way Saddam designed it, the "atom bomb to web" clogs up the tubes of Democracy.

Using the American translation, "atom bomb to web" acts something like a neutron bomb, in that it vaporizes all the Bush Administration claims that Saddam had WMDs, without damaging any infrastructure.

Woke up this morning with the brilliant idea of building home made nuclear to protect my home from those pesky neighbors. What does the Feds do? Re-classify the documents. What's an evil genius supposed to do now?!

"Woke up this morning with the brilliant idea of building home made nuclear to protect my home from those pesky neighbors."

1) Build nuclear reactor in home
2) Melt down reactor
3) Turn into giant radiactive monster
4) Take next door neighbor's lawnmower and plasma TV while you are hulked out. Not a damn thing he can do about it.
5) Profit!

From the "nuclear boyscout" to Farnsworth Fusor enthusiasts, a surprising number of people do build (very weak and of questionable usefulness) nuclear reactors in their homes.

I wish I had mirrored the site, because I'm curious just how explicit these documents are. I wonder if they're more explicit than what I was able to find on google [slashdot.org] for a previous Slashdot post.

A chemistry instructor told us the story for why the ceiling tiles above the lecture table were missing. She filled up a balloon with hydrogen, let it go up about 20 feet on a string and set it on fire with a candle on a pole. Needless to say, the resulting "ka-boom" was a tad bit more stronger than she expected and five ceiling tiles came tumbling down. Of course, no one builds hydrogen bombs anymore.

"Couldn't find the "Nuclear Bombs for Dummies" book at the bookstore. A tin-pot dictator from N. Korea bought all the copies."

Yes. In fact, it was the title of this book which inspired his drive to build the bomb, and due to translation problems he thinks the title refers to a proposed trade, not a type of reader. He hopes to trade the bombs for something he can really use: sex dolls.

...I'm sure anyone who could get the raw materials already has this knowledge.

Exactly; obtaining weapons grade uranium or plutonium is the hard part. Building a crude atomic bomb isn't as difficult. I'm not saying that it is easy, but some of the designs (gun type) are not that sophisticated.

This is about more sophisticated designs. The weapons experts the Times talked to said that this kind of information is for people working with a government budget and would help them avoid trial and error.

A sophisticated design means higher yield or more bombs for a given inventory of fissionables, and maybe lighter bombs more suitable for use on a missile.

That could be very, very bad. Has anyone found any specifics? It would very interesting to see what, exactly, the fuss is about. I didn't RTA because I don't want to register and I forgot how to bypass the NY Times registration page (yes, sometimes I am that absent-minded).

The article is (obviously) light on specifics. If I had to guess from what it said, the removed info was probably specifics on 1) constructing a fissionable core 2) constructing the implosive lens system used to achieve supercriticality and 3) problems the Iraqis had doing this. Info such as this might have saved the North Koreans from having their bomb fizzle recently. There could have also been stuff in there about boosting the cores.

When I was an undergraduate, I ran into entire schematics and documents from the 1950s through the 1980s on how to build atomic bombs and devices in our University Library in the engineering section. The documents were most extensive and had everything you needed to know including materials and engineering specifications. The only thing that would have been difficult to obtain was the plutonium or enriched uranium. I checked the documents out and spent a couple of weeks reading through them in a cursory

Well, if by raw materials you mean the U235 or Pxx (I forget which plutonium isotope is used), then absolutely. Frankly, developing the bomb seems like something that any good team of engineers could do -- and if there's one type of professional that every nation seems able to muster, it's engineers. Even terrorist groups seem able to get their hands on competent engineers. After all, they're keeping all that Soviet weaponry in good repair, manufacturing rockets and IEDs that are, in some cases, quite so

Now that they have provided potential terrorists with information they might require, the U.S. has added themselves to the "Axis of Evil". George Bush wasted no time in acting and immediately attacked himself by knawing at his right hand:P

I guess we have to assume he means "would be a short cut past a lot of things," presumably some re-inventing-the-wheel R&D that was done 50 years ago and has been repeated in Pakistan, India, and now North Korea (where you can get a free pizza with any weapon you buy, as long as you pay shipping). Worrying about it seems a little silly since the Khan network had already done a fair business in selling complete, down-to-the-schematics and Home Dep

Any country/party that wants to build nukes is going to have a much harder time getting the riht fissile material pulled together than they're going to have setting the thing off.

Who knows: the plans could be for working and economical uranium enrichment technologies, not the nukes themselves. As has been repeated ad nauseum, working nukes aren't that hard to build. More difficult problems are: (a) enriching uranium or extracting plutonium (b) making the nukes reasonably efficient. However, with a suff

The truly predictable thing about this mess is that Republicans have been asserting that this is a) proof that Hussein was within a year of building a nuclear bomb (it isn't), and b) that this is the NYT's fault.

I mean, nevermind that righty-blogs were falling all over themselves pressing for the release of these. Somehow, they were convicned that opening these documents would unleash an "Army of Davids," and the President pushed to have the documents declassified and published before anyone had the chance to read them. Now that it turns out that, oops, hey, instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb are in there, Andrew Card is blaming - who else? - the NYT [thinkprogress.org].

And this is after they'd already found instructions on how to make sarin in there.

So you're saying that this isn't proof that Saddam had the ability to build a bomb in less than a year.

BUT you're saying that it is instructions for someone ELSE to build a bomb within a year.

Where you're correct: Yes, I am saying Saddam did not have the ability to build a bomb in less than a year. And I am also saying that the documents contained instructions on how to build a bomb, although I wouldn't care to speculate on a time frame.

I thought that I read that the Duelfer Report also talked about how, although the weapons programs were not up and running, Saddam was hoping to use the oil for food program to wiggle his way out of inspections and international pressure? Saddam was hoping that once that happened he could resume the research and development of WMD. We now know that the oil for food payoffs were working. Thankfully we will never know when the next step would have been.

I thought that I read that the Duelfer Report also talked about how, although the weapons programs were not up and running, Saddam was hoping to use the oil for food program to wiggle his way out of inspections and international pressure? Saddam was hoping that once that happened he could resume the research and development of WMD. We now know that the oil for food payoffs were working. Thankfully we will never know when the next step would have been.

I linked to a site which had a video of Andrew Card, on The Today Show, blaming the New York Times, with an accompanying transcript.

I understand that all the progressive over there might scare you, but come on, it's W's former chief of staff being interviewed by Matt Lauer on that video. Surely you can brave the scary hippie vibes long enough to click play.

Designing an Atomic weapons isn't that hard. Just get a bullet with appropriate fission material and shoot it at a core of enriched Uranium or for you hydrogen bomb... Get some plutonium and put it in a sphere and detonate with appropriate explosives to get it to implode.

The hard part is getting the enriched Uranium or Plutonium.

If you are able to design systems to refine either material, then its a cakewalk making the bomb.

It won't make a difference for a government - which is fine, I'm not that scared of governments having nukes (given how we survived for the last 50 years). Governments have all kind of rules for monitoring each other and generally they aren't suicidal, so MAD works fine with nation-states.However, it might make a difference, since now al-Quaeda has access to these docs as well. If al-Quaida manages to also steal Uranium too, we will be in trouble. It's just another example how our government jeopardizes the

If al Qaeda (or anyone else) is capable of stealing enough enriched Uranium or Plutonium to build a bomb, then their ability to do so ought to be basically assumed.The physics behind it aren't all that hard; if you can steal a nuclear weapon, I'm sure you can find some out-of-work nuclear engineer to help you draw up the plans. It's not as if the U.S. or even the West has a complete lock on that knowledge. There are probably thousands -- maybe more -- of people who would be capable of designing a nuclear we

On second thought, my first sentence isn't as obvious in its meaning as it should have been. Please allow me to clarify:If al Qaeda (or anyone else) is capable of stealing enough enriched Uranium or Plutonium to achieve theoretical supercriticality, then their ability to build a bomb out of it ought to be basically assumed.

I.e., in designing our security precautions, we should err on the side of always assuming that the terrorists will know how to build a bomb, once they have the minimum set of physical obj

Um.. Thermonuclear weapons are hard to make. REALLY hard. Fission-only weapons are pretty simple, but you have to avoid accidentally irradiating and killing yourself while building them. But a hydrogen bomb is not something that could be thrown together by anybody without very specific, deep knowledge of certain parts of physics, and a LOT of money and equipment. And the necessary knowledge is voluntarily kept secret by the few humans on the planet who actually know enough to build a working thermonuclear d

Designing an Atomic weapons isn't that hard. Just get a bullet with appropriate fission material and shoot it at a core of enriched Uranium or for you hydrogen bomb... Get some plutonium and put it in a sphere and detonate with appropriate explosives to get it to implode.

Wrong. Designing a nuclear weapon is enormously difficult. The problem isn't the physics. The problem is the engineering. Most of the effort of the Manhattan Project was spent on engineering problems. They physics was solved by 1942, but

Things are quite a bit more tricky even if you have material; the "detonate with appropriate explosives" step you mention requires rediculous timing accuracy. Failure to detonate the exposives pefectly results in a non-nuclear blast.

Or a lower-yield nuclear blast. Modern nukes are designed so that failure to achieve perfect detonation results in little or no nuclear yield (for safety reasons, in the event of a bomber crash, for example). Older bombs, with a core closer to critical mass for its size were

Big deal. My 16 year old neighbor with Freenet can find out how to make a nuke. Finding out _how_ to is easy. It's actually doing that which requires a lot of resources, connections, etc. Iraq had none of these (as evidenced by the fact that none of it was found after years and years of searching). Just the GOP trying to piss into the tidalwave of DNC talking points about the cockup that is Iraq.

Really, you should be asking what Saddam was doing with this document in the firstplace, and how close was he to getting the bomb.

U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra's reply:

"Yesterday's article by the New York Times highlights a number of important issues with respect to Iraq's WMD programs, as well as the importance of the documents that have been recovered in Iraq," said U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. "I am pleased that the document release program continues to

Can we actually still say that anyone can "give" the ability to build a nuke to anyone else in the modern so-called civilized world? The first A-bombs are over 60 years old. Whether you want to build a new Fat Man or Little Boy out of 1940s parts or a slick warp-capable photon torpedo with integrated AI sophisticated enough for it to have a favorite Thelonius Monk album is all pretty much up to the builders, but either one uses an idea that anyone who wants nowadays, has. Suppresing it is like trying to

Another poster said that cryptome would probably have this at some point in the future, and it's a safe bet that they will.

Personally, I'm wondering if there's a google cache or wayback machine archive of the site. I need to go dig around because this is exactly the sort of information I need to have my laptop next time i take an international flight;)

The information on how to build an atomic bomb is already on the web. The issue isn't the directions. It's actually executing the directions. It's not an easy thing to do correctly. Plus, actually obtaining the materials to do so isn't easy either. A few years ago there was a mass panic in some state because a kid did his science project on how to build an atomic bomb. How many high school kids actually built one after that?

Basically, if you have enough resources to obtain the correct materials and the s

Right - maybe the plans weren't for a bomb itself - it's easy enough to build a gun-type bomb with sizable yield. Maybe they were for working calutrons or other uranium enrichment technology that allows a nation to gain access to pure fissile material in sufficient quantities to build a nuke.

A few years ago there was a mass panic in some state because a kid did his science project on how to build an atomic bomb.

Well, the very basic knowledge, gun method, explosive lensing, etc is well known to anyone that's read the Wikipedia entry. Detailed instructions on how to construct a nuclear trigger and fire all the charges at exactly the right time aren't. It's not a big deal in the sense that the knowledge isn't particularly hard to get. It's just kind of embarrassing for the Bush administration to have published this information themselves. Basica

I am sitting here reading the Slashdot comments and noting that not one person is noting that these nuclear documents are from 1991 [reason.com]. No one has ever denied that Saddam had a nuclear program before the first Gulf War. The actions of Bush I shut that down.

This has nothing to with whether Saddam had WMDs when we went to war in this decade. All the intelligence that we have suggests that he was as close to nuclear weapons as a good university (i.e. the know-how but not the infrastructure).

Seems to me like the hard part about engineering an implosion bomb is, well, getting the implosion right. Couldn't you just trial-and-error that with lead stand-ins for the Plutonium for a while until you got it right? I mean, isn't that at least partly what the Manhattan Project did? Is the physics of the "atomic" part of an atomic bomb really that unknown anymore? What am I missing?

BUSH: [...]We'll be implementing a missile-defense system relatively quickly.And that is another way to help deal with the threats that we face in the 21st century.[...]LEHRER: [...] if you're reelected, Mr. President, and if you are elected, the single most serious threat you believe, both of you believe, is nuclear proliferation?BUSH: In the hands of a terrorist enemy.

We are doing everything we can to deploy that Star Wars missile-defense system

were there not a couple of mystery cargo ships that departed shortly before the war started and vanished? There was something on the news at the time about them, but they dissapeared ina region where there was nil chance of finding them if they'd been skuttled.

After that, no more mention, but if wmd existed, my money would go on them being on those ships.

Well, there's a lot of technologies that aren't classified as WMD, but are still secret and should not end up in al-Quaeda's hands (s.a. those released documents). Saddam Hussein was apparently smart enough to prevent terrorists from seeing those. Our government, OTOH, is more interesting in creating positive PR for themselves.

You're exactly right, but you missed the part where the technology really isn't all that advanced, and that any halfway organized state (and Iran is way more than halfway organized) could easily do it on their own.

Did anyone else see the Daily Show interview with one of Suddam Hussein's former employee's (i say employee cause i can't remember if he was a general or what) where he pretty much said, "I saw the WMD's as they were dismantled and transported out of the country." Sorry I'm short on details (don't remember the guys name or the date that it aired, i think last spring), but essentially he confirmed that the WMD's did exist, but they got rid of them before the invasion.

And in all fairness, Saddam was just keeping the documents around to donate to the Saddam Hussein Presidential Library for historical purposes when his term was up, he wasn't actually planning on using them to build any weapons down the line.

...by the same token, that must mean I am still planning to attend college at RIT because I still have copies of my application (even though I've already graduated from another college.)That must mean all the bookmarks I have for product X are dead-on proof that I am planning to buy it, even though I already bought competing product Y. I'd better break out the credit card.

Holy crap, I just realized I have my tax returns in here! I know I sent a check in already, but unless I burn my copies I'll have to p

and part of the cease fire agreement was that Iraq destroy and document the destruction of the WMD, and that did not happen. The most damning thing in my opinion is we didn't find any chemical agents, after being in the business I can state that any country with that much chemical protective equipment is going to have at least lab quantities of common chemical weapons for quality control testing.

UN Inspections. The UN did not think that an attack was warranted. The US does NOT have the authority to attack a country without the approval of the UN. We are a global community.

To put this in perspective, let's say that there's a suspected child molester in your town. The police have been tipped off that he might have molested someone's kid, but they can't get any evidence of that actually happening, and the suspect will not allow police to search his property. An angry coalition of parents desce

BTW, it was never about whether Saddam had WMD, but whether he allowed inspections. He didn't. He lost.

Bullshit. Someone else apparently wants to rewrite history.

Iraq: U.N. Inspections for Weapons of Mass Destruction [fas.org] (Updated October 7, 2003) (pdf format) Note particularly that while the inspections were taking place, and cooperation was good, the ONLY areas of contention were some ambiguities in Iraqi documents as far what was listed and what was shown.

Erm, try reading the article, maybe ?This is Iraq research from before the first Gulf war, before all sanctions were in place.Iraq stopped all WMD programs after first Gulf war, and wasn't advancing them.Even more importantly, they weren't giving this information to al-Quaida and every other nutball with Internet connection.

So, if I understand this correctly, the NYT (which insists that Saddam never really had any WMDs, and that any development program was phony) publishes an article critical of the administration for putting documents up the web from the so-called Iraqi development programs because they reveal too much information about bomb making?

a. No you do not "understand this correctly".

b. The NYT has never said that Saddam "never really had any WMDs". We know he had them. We sold them to him back during the Iran/Iraq w

How (precisely) does someone get to the point of knowing enough about developing nukes that his notes are classified as sensitive, without actually trying to build those nukes himself?

Perhaps in the same way they got their WMD technology in the first place: from us.

We most definitely provided Saddam with money, weapons, and training. In exchange he did our bidding and played hand-puppet for a while before he got delusions of grandeur and we had to put him back in his place, so to speak. (Note that I

At the same time, these technical documents could be flawed in ways that would be extremely difficult to detect. The air force one documents could have applied to an older model or even just been completely inaccurate. How would you know? Have you snuck on board the real thing and compared?

Jesus. If you were following the story you would know that these documents are from Saddams pursuit of nuclear weapons prior to the 1991 gulf war. It has never been in dispute that he had an active weapons program before that 1991 war. We sure as f-ck didn't go into Iraq because we though he might still have some documents on how to build an A-bomb. We went into Iraq because he allegedly still had an active weapons program and/or WMDs lying about somewhere, and/or the raw materials to make them. All 3 of which proved to be a complete fabrication.

These documents do not show anything new about what Saddam had or didn't have. They only show that while our government was willing to start a war just in case Saddam was dumb enough to give such designs to a terrorist group that hated him, our government is itself dumb enough to take those designs and give them to a terrorist group that hates us.

If you were following the story you would know that these documents are from Saddams pursuit of nuclear weapons prior to the 1991 gulf war.

You mean this from the story?

Among the dozens of documents in English were Iraqi reports written in the 1990s and in 2002 for United Nations inspectors in charge of making sure Iraq had abandoned its unconventional arms programs after the Persian Gulf war. Experts say that at the time, Mr. Hussein's scientists were on the verge of building an atom bomb, as little as a ye

a) Posession of those documents is not proof of an ongoing weapons development program.b) Possession of those documents is not proof of the technological capability of executing the instructions in those documents.c) Possession of those documents is not proof of having the materials to execute said instructions, even if you have the capability.

Hell, I can download the instructions for any number of weapson *right now*. That's no basis for invading my home.

a) Posession of those documents is not proof of an ongoing weapons development program.b) Possession of those documents is not proof of the technological capability of executing the instructions in those documents.c) Possession of those documents is not proof of having the materials to execute said instructions, even if you have the capability.

True, but the Iraqi creation of the docs is proof of all of the above.

Wow, so many falsehoods (or trolls?). First off, all those documents prove is that, back in 1991, they were in possession of the documents necessary to build a nuke. It says nothing about their technological capability or whether they possessed the necessary materials.Second off, those documents provide no evidence for a recent active weapons program.

Third, there's no evidence they even *authored* the documents. They could have come from anywhere.

You are correct. Bush did lie to us, and Iraq had no functional WMDs at the time of the invasion. These are old documents from before the first Gulf War. Putting them out now helps Bush lie again with the implication that there were WMDs and also helps the administration give valuable research to real terrorists for free. So not only did he lie then, but he is lying through implication again, as well as giving away nuclear secrets to terroris

Excuse me, stupid (and I mean that with all due respect). The NYTimes admits that in 1991 Saddam had nuclear knowhow. Remember the run-up to the war? Nobody ever claimed that Saddam didn't try to get WMDs back around the time of the first Gulf War, but the whole thing about the UN sanctions was that Saddam was supposed to dismantle the project. And guess what? It turns out he actually did. We've got a few hundred thousand US troops and another 50k "contractors" who get paid by Haliburton who've scoure

Actually there are a lot of minor details that take effort to find out. For instance there was this 17 year old boy scout in Michigan who built a breeder reactor in his backyard, from smoke detectors, old glowing paint and taking batteries apart, and while he got all kinds of badges as a scout and was pretty smart, he still needed to trick some officials from smoke detector and battery companies and nuclear agencies into telling him how some things work exactly, saying he was doing a school report. I guess